Dynamics 365 (formerly CRM) - Account Update Tool

Having recently deployed Dynamics 365 (formerly CRM) for our client, their Account data is held in their internal ERP system. This needs to be pushed into 365 each time an account is created.  Until now, this data has been imported once a month, using a dynamics job.  However, this job does not allow an organisation to update information held in an existing account in 365.  To prevent the two system's from being out of sync, controls were put in place on 365. This is to make all account data imported from the ERP, read-only.

This is Time Consuming! What to do? We wrote a custom data management tool.

Our solution will now insert new accounts, or update existing from a CSV output.  Once a week, an automated SQL job is run to output a CSV file, which is picked up by our data mangement tool, and using the Dynamics CRM SDK, we update any records currently held in 365 and insert the news ones.  This means both system are kept in sync, but the ERP system remains as the master system ... (for now)!

Why is this important?

There should always be a master system in this scenario so the two systems are in sync.  One should "pull" and one should "push".  An account for this client, should only be setup once a series of checks have been made, and they have been authorised by the Credit Control department, therefore it was important ERP was master.